Dont forget, as soon as Treyarch finishes a game, I wouldnt doubt if a good chunk of them are back to start on the next game. Also sometimes fixes arent as easy as people think... Ive always loved the arguement against first week lag, sometimes its just something you cant avoid and you just try to contain.

The issue here is that the "first week lag" still hasn't been fixed on PS3.

The thing that ruffles my jimmies the most is like that guy said, they could easily fix the major issues but just... don't.

It's likely cost/benefit analysis.

You already bought the game, they have your money. Now, they want to keep the majority of players happy, but the majority of players aren't screaming about these things. The majority of players don't even know what it is (remember, a lot of the players are like 12-16 years old). And they also know that 90%+ of the people complaining are just going to buy the next game anyway. So instead, they focus on fixing the little things which are cheaper to fix and have a widespread impact (all players) over the bigger issues that effect less people (and less people care). It's a business decision.

They still have to pay the people on the staff, no matter if they have them fix little things or big things. And I'd be willing to bet that the CEO of Activision (the people who get all the money from sales) doesn't head down to one of the game studios and tell them how to manage their time.

This argument - which a lot of people propagate - that Treyarch has their money, now they don't care, is absurd. There's a thing called pride, too, that gets in the way. When you're working on this big a project, which will be consumed by as many people as it is, you want to do a good job. You want to show your absolute best work, otherwise you wouldn't have been hired at such a big studio in the first place. A job like developing a video game requires a ton of overtime, extra work above and beyond - people who are only in it for the money won't make it that high up in the industry. Their lack of care will weed them out, because they won't be willing to put in the hours.

Does this mean 100% of people will be 100% pleased? Of course not. But money is not the driving force for the creative team - at Treyarch or any of the other big development studios.

Money is ALWAYS the driving force in a business. Period. End of discussion.

Would the developers like to go make changes to make it better? I'm sure they would. But, like I said, cost/benefit analysis is likely the reason behind it.

Are they still paying their developers to make changes either way? Of course. But like I said, it comes down to which they feel are "more important" to please the most people as possible, and whether you want to admit it or not, more people are going to be more pleased by a DLC with a new weapon than they would with fixing the lag compensation. Like I said, the vast majority of their customers don't even know what the heck "lag compensation" means -- they are 12-16 years old or so.

Your CEO comment isn't relevant at all. The CEO doesn't make money based off sales -- the company does. He likely has stock in the company and such which would be an indirect way of making money off of them, but your example implies he's the one getting the cash when that's just not true. That's not how large corporations work. The CEO isn't going to go ANYWHERE and tell anyone how to manage their time, of course. But you know who is? The mid-level managers, who will report up to directors, who will report up to VPs, who will report up to Presidents, who will report to the CEO.

Of course there is pride involved, and that will be when they are developing the game itself -- they aren't just going to half-butt their job (some may, but a lot of people don't). But, when it comes to determining which things to fix afterwards, it is absolutely and unequivocally not up to the developers in the slightest -- they take direction from their superiors, who take direction from their superiors, etc. Trust me, I'm a developer myself (not a game developer) and I see this every single day of my life. There is SO much stuff I want to go back and re-work to make it better, more efficient, less bugs, etc. But every day, we are given items to work that in the grand scheme of things, you think "Why the heck am I wasting time on this?!" and the answer is always "Because that's what the customer wants" and you do what you have to do in order to keep the vast majority of your customers happy.

I know people like to think that making changes is really up to the developers -- but it just flat out isn't. That's not how large companies work. The decisions are made by the higher ups, who do everything on a cost/benefit analysis -- is it worth the time to spend on this situation and what are we giving up by doing so? And with lag compensation, it's such a small subset of customers who are the ones harping on it as compared to those who just don't even notice. I'm sure they would like to address the issue, and they very well may in the future (or even be doing so presently), but the bottom line is that there is a lot more that they are focusing their attention on at the same time that is taking resources away because these other things will positively affect a larger range of their customer base than fixing lag compensation would.

I'd buy your argument if I believed the profits on Call of Duty were razor thin. But it doesn't make sense to me that Activision would be micro-managing Treyarch, telling them what they can and can't fix, when they sell as many copies as they do, and consequently make as much money as they do.

I understand that the team is contractually obligated to put out DLC packs, so resources will go there. But the group of people who design and animate maps are not the same ones who work with netcode. I don't imagine those resources taking away form one another. The guys are already on staff, so they'll just do their separate jobs.

I can also buy the higher-ups saying "You have this much time and money to fix thins," giving the Treyarch team limited resources for fixing problems post-launch. But once again, I have a hard time believing that, if Vonderhaar said "We're going to fix XYZ using the resources you gave us," that the higher-ups would go, "No, you need to fix ABC and that's final! It's what the customers want!" It just doesn't make sense to me.

Why trust Treyarch to make an entire game based on their own expertise, then when it's time for post-launch support the higher-ups suddenly find it necessary to interfere?_________________

I think this is the kind of gamestyle I'm going to start using. Unfortunately I see it spreading.

That is embarrassing. Why even play the game.

Because it's just a game. I'll be honest, I sometimes spend games doing nothing but trolling other players because I find it hilarious how upset they get over a video game. People take this game far too seriously.

I do this all the time. But I don't get standing still aiming. That's not even playing. That's watching,. How is that fun?

Fun is 100% subjective. I never quite camped like that, but I've had fun camping in buildings with my shotgun and killing the same people over and over again and listening to them rage. Like I said, it's just a game. People can have fun with it however they want.

And that's why I hate playing solo,people having 'fun' not going for the objective._________________

Ton of lag while playing today. Everyone was complaining about it. Overall was a fun day of playing. Got schooled by some dude with a shotgun. He may have gotten me 4 or 5 time before I was finally able to take him down.

Equip yourself with two grenades and fast hands (no ghost so they find you!). Just stand facing a wall and toss the grenades out and then continue to pick them up and rethrowing them until someone comes along and kills you. Works REAL well in Kill Confirmed (just got 3 kills in one match).

I will do this tonight until I get the accomplishment done (25 kills I think?). Trollin!

I'd buy your argument if I believed the profits on Call of Duty were razor thin. But it doesn't make sense to me that Activision would be micro-managing Treyarch, telling them what they can and can't fix, when they sell as many copies as they do, and consequently make as much money as they do.

I'm not trying to argue that one company is telling another what to do -- I'm arguing that the decisions on what to do/not to do come from the people who sees these things in pure dollars and cents. Fixing something as involved as lag compensation is a LOT more time consuming than fixing little glitches and bugs. It would require a lot of in depth analysis, coding and extensive testing because the absolute last thing they would want to do is make it even worse. It's absolutely not some easy fix -- if it was, it would have been done in the beginning stages or shortly after release. The amount of testing that would need to be done to simulate hundreds of thousands of people's connections is exhaustive -- much more involved than simple "does this gun's recoil pattern match what we want it to", "are people still spawning behind enemies when killing themselves on Hijacked Dom", etc.

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I understand that the team is contractually obligated to put out DLC packs, so resources will go there. But the group of people who design and animate maps are not the same ones who work with netcode. I don't imagine those resources taking away form one another. The guys are already on staff, so they'll just do their separate jobs.

Even if so, these netcode guys aren't just sitting around -- they are working on other projects, whether its the new version coming out next year (or 2 years), other games, etc. They won't take the risk of slipping on a different project to try and slightly fix a lag compensation issue that a very small percentage of the fanbase is complaining about. It just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint.

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I can also buy the higher-ups saying "You have this much time and money to fix thins," giving the Treyarch team limited resources for fixing problems post-launch. But once again, I have a hard time believing that, if Vonderhaar said "We're going to fix XYZ using the resources you gave us," that the higher-ups would go, "No, you need to fix ABC and that's final! It's what the customers want!" It just doesn't make sense to me.

The higher ups won't overrule. The higher ups make the decision. There is absolutely some person in some sort of role that is the guy in charge of making these decisions, and it certainly isn't a low level guy. They will have a lot of meetings discussing things that are broken, give detailed estimated costs of work (ie. "I think this will take 40 hours to code, 40 hours to test myself, then 120 hours for quality testing", etc) and when all of those things are documented, it's decided which ones will be worked first based on cost/benefit. Again, I see this everyday of my life as a developer -- I give ROMs like it's my job to tell those making the decisions how much time I think it'll take me to fix something, and then they take it all into consideration, take it to a board of people who vote on it (the ones in charge of the finanances for their business), and if passed, my higher ups discuss with them a timeline of when they need it done by, and if agreed upon, come back to me and say "Ok, you need to fix this by this date." These decisions are made by people who have little knowledge about the technology itself. It's like that in every large corporation.

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Why trust Treyarch to make an entire game based on their own expertise, then when it's time for post-launch support the higher-ups suddenly find it necessary to interfere?

The higher ups were always there making decisions. Developers make very little decisions in terms of the projects. You have project managers overseeing the development, project managers meeting with directors to give statuses and report any issues with resources/funding/schedule slip, etc, those directors report up to VPs, and on up the chain. The higher ups aren't just jumping in, they've been there guiding it all along -- that's their job, they oversee a variety of projects via the statuses they get from the lower level people like the project managers. The project managers "could" make any decision they want to, but then they're asked all kinds of questions from their superiors regarding cost/benefit, schedule, customer satisfaction in relation to their fixes, etc and if it's found they are focusing on things that impact just a small subset of the community vs other things that will have a larger impact (new toys, glitch fixes, etc) then they won't be keeping their job very long. These people aren't making decisions based on "I think fixing the lag compensation will make the game more enjoyable overall", they're making it based on "I think implementing this new DLC and fixing these glitches will address more wide spread issues that impact a much larger subset of the community, all the while taking less time and resources to develop and test." It simply all comes down to money -- and it should, it's a business._________________

The issue here is that the "first week lag" still hasn't been fixed on PS3.

It's whatever patch that was after the first week (1.03 I believe) that completely screwed up the game. The first week of the game was amazing and my k/d and w/l were both starting to skyrocket. I had a lodestar on the first night of the game and I've barely bothered running one since. I was awesome on those first few nights and then everything became about connection and lag.

Hammertime52 wrote:

Just to let everyone know, try to use "Swarm". I got one in a care package, and i got 11 kills

Had one the first night out of a CP, got about 20 kills with it. I had somebody in the room watching me play for that game. It was on standoff and he was like "damn that's beast"_________________

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I'm a Vikings fan, that must naturally mean that I'm a masochist, right?

Just jab your shield into the ground and lay behind it a few steps. Now juggle both grenades against the shield until someone kills you. Another option is to throw the grenades around/over your shield if you know someone is coming. Works best on Kill Confirmed and it's helpful if you play Ground War against a real aggressive clan (I had multiple triple kills in one match).

Took about 3 hours to finish the accomplishment (25 kills) and I went negative about 200-300 deaths. But it was troll worthy and I got a couple chuckles out of the comments. I also got Vsat/EMP/Dogs in on match!